Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Las Vegas Sands Corp. was
sanctioned by a Nevada judge who said the company and its Sands
China Ltd. unit intentionally deceived her by not disclosing
evidence sought by the former head of its China operations in a
lawsuit over his firing.

Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez in Las Vegas
said in a ruling yesterday that Las Vegas Sands and Sands China
were precluded from raising Macau’s personal data privacy law as
an objection to disclosing evidence that may bear on whether the
Nevada court has jurisdiction over Sands China.

The judge also ordered the companies to pay $25,000 to the
Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada and to pay the attorneys’
fees of Steven Jacobs, the ex-chief executive officer of Sands
China, related to those portions of hearings over the past year
that were devoted to discussions of the Macau privacy law.

“The repeated nature of defendants and defendants’ agents
conduct in making inaccurate representations over a several
month period is further evidence of the intention to deceive the
court,” Gonzalez said.

The judge ordered a sanctions hearing after Sands’ lawyers
disclosed to Jacobs in June that his e-mails and other computer
files had been in Las Vegas for more than a year while the
lawyers argued to the court that the Macau law prevented them
from bringing data to the U.S. from Macau and that all data had
to be reviewed first by Sands China lawyers in Macau.

‘Illegal Demands’

Jacobs sued in 2010 after he was fired, alleging he was
dismissed because he wouldn’t give in to “illegal demands”
from Sheldon Adelson, the chairman and majority-owner of Las
Vegas Sands. Jacobs said Adelson directed him to secretly
investigate Macau government officials and use “improper
leverage” against them.

Following Jacobs’s allegations, the U.S. Justice Department
and Securities and Exchange Commission opened investigations
into whether Adelson’s company violated the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act. That law prohibits companies with U.S. operations
and their intermediaries from making improper payments to
foreign officials to win or retain business.

Las Vegas Sands has denied Jacobs’s allegations and has
said it is cooperating with the investigations. Lawyers for the
casino company have said in court filings that Jacobs was
dismissed for working on unauthorized deals and violating
company policy.

Jacobs’s lawsuit was put on hold last year by the Nevada
Supreme Court while Gonzalez resolves whether claims against
Sands China belong in the state’s courts. Sands China, a
majority-owned unit of Las Vegas Sands that is incorporated in
the Cayman Islands, has said in court filings that it doesn’t do
business in Nevada.

Las Vegas

During a three-day hearing in Las Vegas ending Sept. 12,
Las Vegas Sands’ lawyers testified that they shipped Jacobs’s e-mails and a copy of his hard drive to the U.S. in 2010 to
preserve evidence. The lawyers argued that they had disclosed to
Jacobs and the judge that there was evidence from Macau in the
U.S.

The Las Vegas Sands lawyers also admitted during the
hearing that they reviewed Jacobs’s e-mails.

Last year Sands China said that evidence that Jacobs
requested to determine whether the Nevada court had jurisdiction
over the Chinese unit couldn’t be brought out of Macau and that
all evidence from Macau had to be reviewed in the Chinese
territory by Sands China lawyers and cleared with the local
government.

Ron Reese, a spokesman for Las Vegas Sands, said in an e-mail that the company was reviewing the ruling and had no
immediate comment.